


(yet another) silly scandal

by clickingkeyboards



Category: Murder Most Unladylike Series - Robin Stevens
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Eloping, Family Drama, Gen, Phone Calls & Telephones
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-16
Updated: 2021-02-16
Packaged: 2021-03-18 20:41:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29495982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clickingkeyboards/pseuds/clickingkeyboards
Summary: Hazel believed that the most interesting thing to happen that Friday would be Lavinia desperately trying to reclaim her phone from the contraband box, but an article on Clementine's phone bearing the headline 'ELOPEMENT BRINGS SCANDAL TO THE WELLS FAMILY' turns the day on its head and gives the Detective Society a new and rather exciting case to explore.
Relationships: Daisy Wells & Hazel Wong, Harold Mukherjee/Bertie Wells
Comments: 1
Kudos: 15





	(yet another) silly scandal

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lonelyheartsclub_com](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lonelyheartsclub_com/gifts).



When we walked downstairs to breakfast, all jostling and joking about the poetry exam from the day before, nothing seemed amiss. Daisy was walking and reading, her nose buried in the newest Poirot book, while Beanie was chewing on the end of her plait and listening to Kitty ramble about Hugo. I was debating with Lavinia about why it was a terrible idea for her to go and steal her phone out of Matron’s contraband box, and my arguments were wearing thin as the Daisyish part of me thought it a great idea.

“Did you hear Clementine shrieking this morning?” Lavinia asked, scuffing her shoe against the edge of the step we were walking down. “She was practically _yelling_ that she had her phone, and she didn’t get told off! Why should I go without mine?”

“Just take it on the chin!” I said, though I did want to see what dramatics Lavinia would concoct to get her phone back.

She pushed open the doors to the dining room with a laugh, declaring that she was right, and we all sat down as usual, Daisy beside me and Amina on her other side, Clementine unfortunately next to Amina. That was when things began to feel unusual. Clementine was looking at us nastily, while Daisy stared back in her unperturbed owlish way as we were served our breakfast. The twins were exchanging glances while Sophie giggled, and Amina ignored everything altogether. She wouldn’t even look at Daisy, and she usually finds my best friend very pretty indeed.

“Have you seen the news?” Clementine hissed to the table once there were no adults in earshot, and she passed her phone underneath the table and over Amina’s lap into Daisy’s hands.

Amina pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed, “You’re so _awful_ sometimes. I don’t know why I bother.”

Daisy did not join in with ragging on Clementine, though she usually would love to. Instead, her wide blue eyes were fixed on her phone, at the article titled _ELOPEMENT BRINGS SCANDAL TO THE WELLS FAMILY_. I saw the headline when I peered over her shoulder, and all I could think of was George Mukherjee.

“Matron!” Daisy said, sounding strangely wobbly as she got to her feet and called across the room. “May I use your telephone, please?”

“Daisy, really? It’s not even the end of breakfast, can’t it wait?” she asked, looking rather tired as she turned a page in her paper.

Balling up her hands into fists, she said, “No, it can’t!” It was rather shocking to see her respond so bluntly to what was not really a question, and everybody looked taken aback by it. “Please!”

Daisy Wells never says please. With a sigh, Matron said, “Come on, then. Wong?”

I am usually included whenever Daisy does something at school, but I was not sure that she wanted me involved in such a private thing that had been turned into something very public indeed. “Daisy?”

“Come on, Watson!” she said, jittering about impatiently before grabbing my arm and pulling me out of the room after Matron. As we crossed the hall to her office, she whispered, “You’re family too, you know.”

* * *

Matron set down the enormous book of names and addresses in front of us and said, “Here. Dial your uncle’s number and that number only. I’ll be just outside the door, so I’ll hear if you get up to any mischief. You’re on your honour, Miss Wells.”

Daisy nodded sagely and then ignored everything that Matron had said, instead dialling a number on the clunky plastic phone that I knew to be Aunt Lucy’s work number. Very few people knew it and even fewer dared to call it, but it was a sure-fire line right to her without going through any secretaries at any time of day. It only rang once before she answered, both of us pressed up to the receiver with our hearts hammering. I concentrated on Matron’s box of contraband phones to make my head stop spinning.

“Aunt Lucy!” Daisy hissed, and I heard her let out an enormous breath on the other end. “It’s Daisy and Hazel!”

“Goodness, girls!” she scolded very strictly. “You know that you shouldn’t call this number, especially not from a school phone!”

“Don’t worry, I know how to get Amina to wipe the system,” Daisy said carelessly, gesturing for me to come closer. “Do you know what’s going on with Bertie? All I’ve seen is one headline! And I don’t want to get in trouble for using my phone or they’ll call _Mummy_.”

There were noises at the other end that were clearly Aunt Lucy taking a seat in her office and shooing off somebody inside. “I wish I knew more, girls, but I can at least tell you what happened. Bertie and his boyfriend – well, I suppose it’s husband now – called your parents, Daisy, to tell them that they had eloped and are going on a sort of honeymoon somewhere that they haven’t told anymore. Apparently, Bertie disowned himself in the same sentence. Your mother went ‘typically ballistic’ as Felix put it and called all of these reporters, and now this supposedly scandalous elopement is all over the front page of every paper I’ve ever heard of.”

Daisy groaned and pinched the bridge of her nose, a habit that she did not want to admit that she had picked up from Uncle Felix. “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” she said, and I patted her knee awkwardly. We were squashed together strangely, so I couldn’t give her a hug without stopping listening to Aunt Lucy. “Hazel?”

“Hello, Aunt Lucy!” I said as quietly as I could, mindful of Matron outside the door. “Um… do the Mukherjees know the details?”

“I think that Felix made a call to them, but now that you mention it… I don’t know how accepting they are. What will they have told George? The truth, or a warped version?” she asked.

“A warped version,” we said together, and I elaborated. “They love both George and Harold dearly, but they want to protect George. I don’t know what they’ll have told him.”

In her comforting instructional tones, sounding a bit like the governess that we had met her as, Aunt Lucy said, “I’ll give his school a ring on my normal mobile after this, girls, and explain everything to him.”

“That’s good!” I said, while Daisy made a strange humming noise.

“Have you… spoken to Bertie at all?”

Regretfully, she replied, “No. I’m sorry, girls. We don’t know where he is, not even their friends from Cambridge do. I’m going to give Felix a ring, tell him that you called. Have a good day at school!”

“Goodbye, Aunt Lucy!” we chorused, and Daisy set down the phone.

“This is all stupid stuff,” she said grumpily, leaning her head against my shoulder and quoting her favourite poem. “What can we do?”

“You aren’t being very Daisy about this at all!” I stood up and tried to sort out my skirt, and smiled at her. She looked unusually confused and rather diminished, beaten down by yet another family drama thrown into the papers. “We have a _case_ here, Daisy!”

Looking up at me, she smiled ever so slightly, and I saw the usual sparkle come back into her eyes, my marvellous and brilliant and utterly mad Daisy in front of me again. “I’ll tell Matron that I think I’ve got the most horrific cold and that’s why I’ve been acting so oddly all morning, and she’ll have to send me to the San because they don’t want everyone ill! Then you start coughing and sneezing at the start of second lesson, and you’ll be in the San with me!”

I beamed at her, and it at last felt all right again, even though things were very wrong for Daisy outside the confines of Deepdean School for Girl. “We can try and track down where they are! A case all from our phones!”

“And we will find them! Lord knows that Bertie can’t be that bad at hiding!”

Laughing, I squeezed her hand and we did the Detective Society handshake. A case with no murder was really quite nice sometimes, even if it involved Bertie Wells and I had to pretend to be sick. If I was willing to make those sacrifices, I must have liked detecting much more than I believed I did.


End file.
